“When workers see other workers win a union election, go on strike and succeed, they think: ‘That’s something I can do,’” said Ken Jacobs. But it’ll still be a big challenge to reverse decades of losses in union membership and representation.

Carol Zabin, with the UC Berkeley Labor Center, doesn’t see too much of a problem recruiting construction workers right now because the IRA funding prioritizes trades with apprenticeships. “There’s language written into the bill that says if you pay prevailing wage, if you use apprentices, then you get larger subsidies and incentives from the government,” she said.

“Workers of color have been central participants in the labor movement for a really long time,” said Danielle Mahones, a trainer at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Amazon warehouse workers have criticized management’s use of technology to closely monitor their productivity. They could look to past examples of unions addressing similar concerns, says UC Berkeley researcher Lisa Kresge.

The administration’s trying to use its bully pulpit to reverse a decades-long decline in union power, said Ken Jacobs at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

And Hammerling, who studies the future of work at UC Berkeley, said those who have do their jobs in person –– at restaurants, hospitals, grocery stores –– usually make less than people who can work from home, and the pandemic has only brought more attention to this inequality in the labor market.

“Most everything Biden is proposing are things that are budgetary, which means they can be moved through the Senate procedure called reconciliation, which can be done with a majority vote,” Jacobs said.

The new Biden administration wants to keep this unionization trend going, said Ken Jacobs at the UC Berkeley Labor Center, “changing the law to make it more friendly to workers and easier to organize, and create real penalties on employers who violate the laws.”

“One of the shortcoming around the whole conversation around job creation is that we don’t often go back and look to see how accurate the models actually were,” said Hinkley of UC Berkeley.

Prop 22 requires companies to pay drivers at least 120% of minimum wage, which in California in 2021, would be over $15 an hour. But a study from the University of California, Berkeley says that number doesn’t account for a lot of things.

California measure would bring slight tweaks including a path to health-care reimbursements and some disability insurance, but if companies’ record-breaking $185 million campaign fails, it could mean much bigger changes.